


Beyond Porch and Portal

by caseykaboom



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Character Study, F/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Shifts in POV, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 10:36:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caseykaboom/pseuds/caseykaboom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein love develops quietly and sex is not violent. Because they have enough violence in their lives as they are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blows your mind

The first time Natasha broke into Clint’s apartment, he was propped up in his bed, reading.

“You’re capable of reading,” she was genuinely surprised.

“Yeah,” Clint said, flatly. “Blows your mind, I know.”

Natasha bent down sideways to get a look at the book’s cover: “Harlequin Presents” in a red banner, the author’s name in large, loopy letters, a picture of a kissing couple—it was a romance novel. She snorted and walked into the bathroom.

When she stepped out, rotating the shoulder she shoved back into the socket in the shower, Clint’s bed was empty. She poked her head in the living room and saw him on the couch, hugging a cushion. She huffed softly, closed the bedroom door and slipped under his covers.

+++

Clint _was_ sent to kill Natasha. He was a part of a five-person team—all wetwork veterans, armed to the teeth with the newest SHIELD techs—sent to kill her. The Black Widow. A child of 19. It only goes to show.

She made short work of the two agents that went in hot. Clint was their Long-Range, and only managed to shatter her scapula—it was supposed to be a headshot—before losing sight of her. Clint barked into his mic to abort, retreat, get Op Control to air-drop another team to mop up this mess. His usual partner, their Comms in this mission, gurgled. Clint swore under his breath, tore off his throat mic, and gave up his planned exit.

He got down to street level, gun up, rounded a corner, and their van was slowly rolling to a stop. Transport was dead, blood splashed all over the windshield. The van door slid open, and his usual partner slumped onto the street, blood oozing out of his neck. Natasha stepped out and over the body, holding her shoulder.

“Hi,” she flashed her teeth. Her best smile, Clint was sure.

“Do you want some fries with that,” Clint deadpanned, because even with her slowly bleeding out and his gun trained to her head less than 5ft away, he could never contain the Black Widow. Not alone, not even with four other guys, so who was he kidding.

She didn’t want any fries, to nobody’s surprise and certainly not the dead guys, but she wanted to be taken to SHIELD. She wanted to defect. _What_ , Clint said, stupidly, and she threw up something vile like _wanting to live_ or _wanting support_ or whatever the fuck it was, and Clint just felt incredulous because she had just killed his entire team, including _his_ usual support by nearly decapitating him, what the fuck was her point again?

“You came back for him,” Natasha said, closing her eyes and resting her head on the tainted window. Clint mumbled _young people these days_ as he called Coulson for extraction.

+++

Natasha woke to the smell of coffee. The couch was empty. She wasn’t alarmed. She drank a mug of coffee, ducked out of Clint’s bedroom window onto the fire escape, and climbed. Clint was on the roof in full gear, bow and arrow in hand, watching the two streets that intersected at his apartment building.

He was watching for threats to her. He didn’t even _like_ her. Natasha was suddenly blindsided by guilt.

Two year ago, when she just finished detox at SHIELD and was partnered to Clint like a baggage, he said to her _never let your guard down_ , as if the Black Widow needed a reminder. But Clint was a sniper. It wasn’t a survival thing for him. Clint learned to _never let your guard down_ by watching his partners die.

No wonder he didn’t like her.

 _What am I even doing here_ , she thought, and she thought of her bleeding past and nameless future. It was her first solo mission at SHIELD and it was child’s play, and Clint must have been praying for the day to be finally off babysitting duty, and the first thing she did after debriefing was to break into Clint’s apartment to see what he was doing. Reading romance novels, apparently, what was a 30-year-old doing reading _romance novels_ , of all things, and when had she ever seen him read, period? _Why was she here?_

“Zeno’s arrow in my heart,” Natasha murmured, still on the fire escape.

“I float in the plunging year,” Clint gave her a look, and patted her head. “C’mon, let’s go back down.”

“You _actually_ read,” Natasha could do a blank face, she was good at blank faces. “I’m impressed.”

“We’ve been through this,” Clint said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Zeno's arrow... plunging year" from Me, by Kenneth Rexroth.
> 
> Title from The Garden of Proserpine, by Algernon Swinburne.


	2. Here kitty kitty

They got back from a terrible op to a level 4 on campus. All of Medical was on stand-down. They debriefed Coulson in a bunker with a single flickering light.

Clint opened the hasty patch job he did on Natasha’s lower back in a SHIELD safe house. Someone had tried to knife her in the kidney. If it had connected with the actual kidney, the twist would have shredded it.

Natasha folded herself in half on the only chair in the room, her back bare down to her hips. Clint cleaned and re-stitched the wound without a flinch or sigh from her. They didn’t have a heat lamp, they didn’t have analgesics, they didn’t have a single useful thing in this bloody hole. He did a good job with the stitches though, Clint thought. When he wasn’t simultaneously being shot at and yelling into a silent radio and trying to get his partner to _stop moving while he patched her up the bad guys can wait, dammit,_ his hands were steady as _fuck_.

He finished it off by taping some ceremonious gauze over the wound. “That should hold up nicely,” he said, patting her shoulder and handing her a blanket. “Here, I found this in the drawer.”

Natasha raised a damp eyebrow at his hand. He had a piece of candy. An orange one, looking like it had been there for a decade. There was a piece of plastic still stuck on one side. He couldn’t get it off.

“I’m not a child,” she said, looking up at him, slightly delirious.

Clint shrugged and popped the candy in his mouth. He wondered, distantly, how normal 20-somethings of the world spent their time. _Not_ , his brain supplied, _holed up with a fever from almost having a kidney carved out, shaking in a blanket so old it crackled, making daily choices to either die_ for _a mission or die_ in _it_ , yes, that was very helpful, thank you very much, brain—

He didn’t know why he did it, but he did. He knelt in front of Natasha, knees on either side of her feet, and kissed her. Licked her lips apart. Pushed the candy into her mouth. Brushed his tongue against hers.

“Um,” Natasha gasped, her head booming. She couldn’t even taste the candy. Clint watched as she sucked on it and swallowed on reflex, her pupils dilated, her knuckles white. _Nope,_ he thought, and he tucked her clammy forehead in the hollow of his neck and held her through the night.

+++

Natasha was decidedly not hiding. She just recovered faster in her own space. There wasn’t much in her townhouse, but it was a comfortable not-much. And it wasn’t paranoia that she didn’t answer the knock on her door, it was that she couldn’t exactly move in a non-painful way and _no-one was supposed to know about her townhouse anyway_. God, she missed SHIELD’s military-grade morphine.

Clint got in through the skylight. _Men_ , Natasha thought irritably. When she broke into _his_ apartment, not only were the windows unbroken but even his locks were left intact.

“Oh,” Clint stammered. “I’ll—I’ll tape it up for you?”

He did a right shit job of taping it up, with a garbage bag and too much duct tape. Natasha told him as such. Clint grinned sheepishly and told her he’d replace it later. Natasha rolled her eyes so hard it nearly pulled something.

“I brought you antiseptic,” he said.

“I _have_ antiseptic,” Natasha bit out. “I have _everything._ ”

“Tasha,” Clint sighed, and Natasha hated the way he shortened her name. He touched her lightly on her arm and she hated that, too, hated how she knew it was designed to calm her, hated that Clint was _trying to calm her_. She snatched her arm away and no, that wasn’t nearly enough to convey how angry she was, so she rammed her shoulder into his chest, putting all of her body weight behind it. Surprise flashed across Clint’s face as he stumbled backwards, suddenly having an armful of Natasha, and he yelped when the door handle jabbed into his back. Natasha huffed into his shoulder. Clint braced his hands carefully against her, one on her ribcage and one on her hip, and made a soft, amused sort of sound.

“Here kitty kitty,” he laughed into her hair.

“I am _so done_ with you,” she hissed, and he leaned his head sideways to kiss her.


	3. Another disappointee

“What do you want for dinner?” Clint asked from the rug. Natasha had taken over his couch.

“Pizza,” Natasha answered, sounding like she was bored out of her mind. They were watching _Friends_.

Clint half-turned to look at Natasha, slouched on his couch and surrounded by cushions. Clint didn’t own any cushions. Neither did Natasha—she just showed up with them, price tags still attached, damp in the corners from the rain. The _Friends_ DVDs were still shrink-wrapped. They were Season Five’s. Clint wondered whether she had seen Seasons 1-4.

Natasha spared him a look. Clint was convinced that Natasha’s eyebrows alone had a larger vocabulary and more sass than all of him combined.

He got up with a grunt to order pizza.

+++

 _You’re not doing this quite right,_ Clint wanted to tell Natasha. He knew what it felt like when greed struck. Everyone at SHIELD did. It stemmed from the deprivation, Clint thought. From disappointment in life. From being in constant danger of dying, dying horribly, and dying alone. Everyone had it.

SHIELD had Psych Eval but not Counseling, because that would be insane. Mostly the agents dealt with it themselves, however they could. It was the reason why half of them chain-smoked or abused alcohol, why some of them owned a truly obscene amount of real estate. Some had tattoos covering every inch of their body. Some enjoyed quantity sex. Some, Clint chuckled under his breath, took great risks and collected Captain America trading cards.

The trick was to pick one thing and just fucking own it. Have too much of it. Embrace it—embrace the anger and disgust of pointless decadence. Have it come to you, accrue to you, and then go get some more. Have this one thing to be avid and frantic for, and _fuck_ the rest.

He looked at Natasha again, her eyes closed but clearly still awake. She didn’t care a wink about _Friends_. She didn’t even like pizza. They had been partnered together for nearly 12 months now, and she had made it a point to use the same gun and same set of knives, when Clint knew for a fact that a “favorite weapon” was not a concept that existed for the Black Widow. Against all of her training she had kept her hair the same color.

 _You can’t have all of the things_ , Clint wanted to say.

He wondered if wanting company was a part of it, for her. It was an insane risk. He wondered if she wanted another disappointee to be disappointed together, or if she wanted someone opposite of that, someone who could lift her up.

+++

Somewhere between wondering if he was company material, pizza, and _could there possibly be any more_ _of “Hey, how you doing,”_ Clint fell asleep. He woke up to the soft click of his lock being unbolted, and nearly shot Natasha—nearly grabbed his gun—nearly _moved his arm, wow, how long has he been sleeping on this arm? He was surprised it didn’t fall off_. He got up from the rug and lurched toward her, his arm drooping uselessly on the side.

Natasha waited patiently at the door, the cushions and DVDs back in the bag she brought them in.

“Can I keep this one?” Clint rummaged through the bag single-handed, and pulled out one of the cushions. It was soft gray, a little coarse to the touch (flax linen?), with two silver birds to one side. Why not? Natasha would probably throw everything away in a dumpster somewhere, where none of it could be traced back to them. The thought of a cute little cushion soaking in rain in the dark… well. And he liked birds. Why not?

“Sure,” Natasha said, taken off-guard. Clint gave her a shit-eating grin.

“Next time we’re watching something with explosions. Like, at least a third of it has to be explosions. With another third of car chases, preferably.”

It took Natasha all of her training to keep her hands down, to keep her face from crumpling, to ease the wisps of _next time_ through her nose and into her chest. “Next time,” she smiled softly, “I’m bringing _Sex and the City._ ”

Clint groaned at the door she shut in his face. Loudly, in case she couldn’t hear it from the other side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Augh how do you exposition super-spy assassins I just. Also the timeline's fucked but I'm chalking everything to the non-linear narrative so.
> 
> Chapter title from Mating, by Norman Rush.


	4. I didn't save you

Clint slipped in from the roof. The first thing he saw was Natasha kicking someone in the hand, so hard that it forced the humerus to jut out from the shoulder. Clint winced and barely had time to think _never lock your elbow like that_ , before another man charged at her from behind. She swerved to the left, swung back, and tapped his neck with her right foot. He was dead before he hit the ground.

And then she was the only one standing, her hands still duct taped behind her back, in a room strewn with bodies and broken screams. She turned to face Clint, and Clint almost dropped his gun in the haste to put his hands up.

“I see the interrogation went well, huh?”

Natasha didn’t answer, and Clint felt the need to maybe explain his presence. “I brought your flight ticket out of this hellhole?”

“… Who are you?”

“I’m… Clint, Clint Barton? We’ve been partners for like, a year and a half? Shit, did they drug you?”

Natasha made a noise. “I can’t… make out your face. Can’t see straight.” She paused, then backtracked. “Yeah, ’m drugged. Dose for a _horse_.”

Clint didn’t dare moving.

“I—” she swayed on her feet. “Did you try to kill me, Clint?”

Clint gaped at her before realizing that she was testing him.

“I did, twice,” Clint said, quickly. “Both for that mission. Got your shoulder the first time. Tried to shoot you again when we hit the bridge, before Fury told me to stand down.” He chuckled. “Did you know that was the first time Fury’s even talked to me? He loves you, man. I like to think that he shat himself a little when Coulson told him you were coming in.”

Natasha snorted, against her better judgement, because she couldn’t quite connect her judgements with her muscles at this point. But if Clint was standing there talking about Fury shitting himself, then it meant they were clear, there were no ears on them, and she could at least level out on her own terms. She nodded, waded over, and let Clint cut her hands free.

“Did their homework with the duct tape,” she wiggled her fingers. “Palm to palm, thumbs to the side, two layers of tape in opposite directions. When I came to my first thought was _aw, opposable thumbs, no_.”

“Hey, now, that’s patented,” Clint said mildly. They had 20 odd miles to cover on foot in a forest, because not even SHIELD could fly a quintjet so close to a war zone, and Natasha’s shoes were no-where to be found. She was also drugged and babbling and uncomfortably close, even by normal standards, and Hawkeye’s personal bubble was larger than most.

He sighed and picked Natasha up, bridal style. She didn’t argue, just looped her arms around his neck and went pliant. His entire being bristled when she breathed down his neck.

They were four miles out before she spoke again.

“Clint?” She slurred. “Is that you?”

“Affirmative,” Clint’s chest rumbled.

“Clint…” A few seconds passed, and Clint thought she had nodded off again. “Why did you save me?”

Clint narrowed his eyes. She was incredibly suspicious, for someone on enough drugs to trip up a horse. “I didn’t save you. You killed my whole team. You could’ve killed me, easy. But you wanted to follow me home? I don’t really get it, either. But it wasn’t like you gave me a choice.”

“Is that why you don’t like me?”

Clint suddenly walked very carefully. “I _do_ like you, Nat. It’s me, Clint. Are you with me?”

Natasha was silent.

Her head hurt and she was seeing spots. She was pretty sure she was drooling down Clint’s shirt. But she was trained against drugs; even with a dose that paralyzed her, she could still think semi-coherent thoughts. And she _remembered_. Clint had fucked her in his SHIELD-issued room, first day out of detox, because they had insinuated that they fell for each other. After that it was once every two or three months, always in their SHIELD-issued rooms, as if the only reason for intercourse was for the status quo.

Natasha made sex _amazing_. Fact. But Clint didn’t like touching her, didn’t like her touching him, didn’t like _seeing her face_ when they fucked. Clint _did not like her_. _Fact._

What did that say about this Clint, she thought it was Clint, it smelled like him all right, this Clint carrying her bridal style, because she was drugged and she didn’t have any shoes? She wasn’t heavy, but she was 130lb of deadweight. To carry her like this for 20 miles, Clint was going to tear the muscles in both of his arms. It would be more sensible to hit her in the head, tie her up, and carry her on his back.

“I’m sorry about your arms,” she blurted, after another half-mile.

“No sweat,” Clint answered, his footsteps steady.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically it's Clint's own fault for not bring Natasha combat boots because come on


	5. Just a distraction

“Fucking hell, Op Control,” Natasha yelled into the radio as she prepped the quintjet, Clint gunning down their pursuers on the suspension ladder. “Normal cruise ships don’t arm their guards with— _shit—_ fucking _bazookas_ , _Jesus_ , what’s the fucking deal?”

“Acknowledged, Delta-1,” came the collected voice of Op Control. “What is the status of the package?”

“This is Delta-2,” Clint strapped himself in the co-pilot seat and flipped his side of the controls. “The package is secure and conscious, but this mission is _bullshit_ , ma’am.”

“We’re a go,” Natasha interjected.

Clint nodded as he shoved the gears in place. “I hate the fucking Pacific,” he said, and the quintjet began to move.

“That’s a lot of water you’re hating then,” Natasha looked over and gave him half a smile. Clint opened his mouth to say something funny—he was _hilarious_ , okay, and his eyes absolutely did _not_ linger—and their package jerked, violently, in the cargo compartment. Clint whipped his head around, and caught Natasha staring at their package. Realization hit him like a sledgehammer.

“Fuck,” he said, scrambling to the back to strip the girl—their package—down, looking for a collar, a bracelet, a fucking puncture wound somewhere. The girl batted at his arms weakly, tapping the back of her neck. “In there,” she rasped, breathing in soft gasps. “Between the C2 and C3 vertebrae.” She spasmed again, blood dripping out of her nose. Second shock.

“Fuck,” Clint said again, cradling her neck. Unsure what to do.

“—punitive chip in her _spinal column_ , estimated radius—” Natasha called, frantic, stretching over to flip Clint’s side of the switches. “—hovering, we need—”

“Could it have killed you to _say_ something,” Clint gritted his teeth. “We spent almost 10 minutes together. I thought that meant something.”

“H-Haha,” the girl said, hyperventilating. “We don’t go that far on the first date, where I grew up.” She gasped, coughed, spat. “Blame my Japanese upbringing.”

A surface-to-air missile trailed past the quintjet, bright and lazy.

“—fucking _missile_ , ma’am, permission to blow up the damned ship—”

Clint paled and looked over his shoulder at Natasha. He couldn’t fire an arrow for half a mile, and the quitjet couldn’t fly backwards. They had to circle it around.

“We’re gonna swing and drop,” Natasha warned, turning and nodding at him once. She was born ready to circle quintjets with the smallest turn radius, Clint decided. He strapped the girl onto the bench as delicately as he could afford to.

“You’re 14,” Clint said. “You’re not supposed to be going on dates.”

“I’m fucking _yakuza_ ,” the girl slurred, her head rolling with the change in _g._ “God, if I knew I was going to die like this I would’ve gone on _more_ dates, I would’ve gone on _so many dates_ —” she sobbed, tears streaming down her face, and Clint wanted to tell her _shut up, just shut the fuck up, he didn’t have the fucking time for this he swore to fuck_ —but the jet jerked sideways to avoid another missile, too bright and too damned close for comfort, and when Clint’s boots found purchase again the girl had stopped moving.

Clint gritted his teeth, turned around and grabbed his bow.

The girl wasn’t some innocent 14-year-old, Clint knew logically. She had started wars in the syndicate world. There was a reason she was held and tortured in an unmarked cruise ship. She held the entry code to an armory somewhere in Manila, and since Stark Industry’s withdrawal from weapons manufacturing this small arms deposit was suddenly, ludicrously, valuable. Suddenly there was a market for it.

So he punched the door-release, drew his arrow, and took aim. Because what else could he do?

+++

They debriefed Hill in a bunker, because all Intelligence Services the world over were on security lockdown. Hill looked like she hadn’t slept for days.

“Thank you, Agents,” Hill said, closing her file jacket. Natasha and Clint nodded. Clint couldn’t even remember the last time he did a rescue mission; Natasha probably never did one. He fought down the urge to glance at her.

“Romanoff, Barton, Coulson needs you in Malibu. We need to know what the fuck Stark is up to.” Hill slid them their files. “Director Fury will personally debrief you in 10. You’re dismissed.”

Clint opened his mouth, but Hill waved him shut-up before he could speak. “We have agents in Manila. You were just the distraction.”

“We are _never_ just a distraction, ma’am,” Natasha said.

Hill’s look could have cut flesh. “You _acted_ as one, so you were. Dismissed, Agents.”

Clint and Natasha filed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good job breaking it Tony


	6. Since when did it come to this

“My God, what happened to you?” Natasha laughed from the door.

Clint followed her gaze and looked at his legs, propped up and in hideous casts all the way up to his hips. Definitely not the best condition he’s been in, but Natasha looked so amused that it made him laugh, too.

“Uh, stuff?” He grinned as Natasha strolled towards him. “I’ll have you know that the other guy is _dead_.”

“Congrats, idiot.” Natasha rolled her eyes. “How bad are they?”

“Not _that_ bad—” Clint began, and was immediately interrupted by his nurse.

“He has nine fractures on the right leg,” he spat, flipping through his clipboard violently. “On the left he shattered his femur and broke all five metatarsals. Ruptured tendons just fucking everywhere.”

“Not _everywhere_ ,” Clint protested, “I’m completely scot-free on the upper body! Look, I’m not even concussed. That’s pretty rad, right?”

“You shut your mouth!” The nurse slammed his clipboard on Clint’s casts, and then slammed it again for good measure. “Jesus fucking Christ I can’t even. What the hell. I hate you all!” He slammed the clipboard one more time and stormed out.

“Aw, I think he likes you.” Natasha waggled her eyebrows.

“Pretty sure that’s the opposite of what he just said—uh.” Clint gaped as Natasha climbed on the bed and straddled him. “Okay, we’re doing this? Now?”

“You have objections?” Natasha purred, collecting her hair to one side with a whip of her head. Clint’s mind played her movement again in slow motion, and his mouth suddenly felt dry.

“Not… really,” he croaked, and Natasha ground into him with a smirk. _But hold on_ , his brain said, fighting for some semblance of control. He dug his nails in his palm and forced his eyes to focus on hers.

“Tash?” He panted, too breathy. Natasha quirked an eyebrow at him—and ripped off his hospital gown. Clint couldn’t help but groan. “Tash,” he tried again, and it sounded more like a moan than anything else. He dropped his hands to her hips and, well, that was a bad idea, now his palms _itched_ and it was all he could do to keep from digging his fingers into her skin. She bent down to kiss him, still undulating in his lap, and Clint’s brain promptly shut off. What was the point of asking questions when he had a very enthusiastic Natasha between his hands?

“Tash,” he breathed, scraping his nails against the underside of her thighs. Her thighs quivered. “Tash, you’re gonna have to do most of the moving, I don’t—”

His nurse chose that moment to burst in. “You’ve got 15 minutes before—oh my God are you guys serious?” he wailed. “Both of his legs are in casts! What is wrong with you!? Jesus, my eyes—at least lock the freaking door!”

+++

“What were you trying to say there, before we got… busy?” Natasha slipped off of the bed and began putting her clothes back on, despite Clint’s—no, Clint did not whine, that was the noise of a _manly protest_ , okay.

“Uh,” Clint tried to blink some oxygen into his head. “Oh—just wanted to ask if you’re all right. Are you? You don’t tend to like sex in Medical.”

Natasha turned to give him a smile, balancing on one leg to pull the pant leg on the other. Of all the things she could do with her body, Clint loved just watching her _move_. “You do,” she shrugged, and Clint nearly asked _do what_?

She patted his hair, the way she did sometimes, and slipped out of the room.

+++

 _Since when did it come to this_ , Clint thought idly, as the evening sun filtered through the blinds. He did like sex in Medical—he liked sex after missions in general. Natasha didn’t; Natasha only really liked sex before undercover jobs, when she was stressed out with homework and personality constructions. So Clint has taken to distracting her from her responsibilities before those missions, because he was her partner and he was a _good_ partner, he knew the extent of her abilities and he knew her limits. Besides, when did Hawkeye ever care about _homework_?

It was silly, really. Men whispered the Black Widow’s name in the dark, hard in their pants and shivering down their spines, while Natasha fucked her partner to procrastinate doing her reading.

So since when did it come to this? Since when did it go from Clint learning how to turn her on and what each of her sighs meant, from him learning that when she came she came hard but never multiple times, from him learning that despite the Black Widow’s reputation she liked it gentle, to Natasha learning to take _him_ apart with a look, a touch, a whisper in his ear?

Since when did they start to _care_? 


End file.
